The global financial crisis showed that both authorities and markets failed to properly assess the size and the evolution of the public debt stock in various economies. In some countries the monetary authorities focused excessively on inflation, without taking into account other key...

In times of fiscal stress, governments fail to adjust fiscal policy in line with the requirements for debt sustainability. Under these circumstances, monetary policy impacts the probability of sovereign default alongside inflation dynamics. Uribe (2006) studies the relationship between inflation...

The divergence in sovereign yields has been presented as a reason for the lack of traction of monetary policy. We use a GVAR framework to assess the transmission of monetary policy in the period 2005-2016. We identify sovereign yield divergence as a key mechanism by which the leverage channel of...

Blanchard (2005) suggested that active interest rate policy might induce unstable dynamics in highly-indebted economies. We examine this in a dynamic general equilibrium model where Calvo-type price rigidities provide a rationale for inflation stabilization. Unstable dynamics can occur when the...

We evaluate alternative public debt management policies in light of constraints imposed by the effective lower bound on interest rates. Replacing the current limit on gross debt issued by the fiscal authority with a limit on consolidated debt of the government can ensure that output always...

In the celebrated paper “Some unpleasant monetarist arithmetic”, Sargent and Wallace (1981) showed that tight monetary policy is not feasible unless it is supported by appropriate fiscal adjustment. In this paper, we explore a simple forward-looking monetary model to show that an anticipated...

This paper has two main objectives. The first is to propose a policy architecture that can prevent a very high public debt from resulting in a high tax burden, a government default, or inflation. The second objective is to show that government deficits do not face a financing problem. After...

This paper investigates whether the funding behaviour of euro area debt management offices (DMOs) changed with the start of the ECB's Public Sector Purchase Programme (PSPP). Our results show that (i) lower yield levels and (ii) PSPP purchases supported higher maturities at issuance. The former...

In a passive monetary and active fiscal policy regime, changes in the value of public debt generate wealth effects on households. Then, in contrast to the active monetary and passive fiscal policy regime, inflation moves oppositely from the inflation target and a stronger reaction of interest...

This paper studies the mediating impact of the maturity of public debt in the transmission of monetary policy shocks to economic activity. A longer debt maturity attenuates greatly the effect of monetary policy: going from the average historical duration of US debt to very short term debt...